Discuss the approach that Smith portrays and how she structures her work building toward the final scene in the play. Discuss how effectively she creates this work for television and how different it might be between a stage version and a television version that you watch.
The way the play or the plot is structured is that it works its way through the characters trying to find the truth of what happened on that fateful day and why. The characters start with the truth about themselves and their identities. The play goes on to focus on characters and their view of the opposing racial community. A small amount of truth is pulled from each interview until the final act where the father reveals his truth of the events. On television, you can fragment the scenes and the actor can switch from one character to the next swiftly with a new set a clothes and look. On stage, the actors cannot pause the play to stop and change their entire look to fit a certain character, and because they are so many different characters in this play, it makes the transitions even harder. The actor is limited on the amount of change and variety they can put in to each character. The main difference between the characters would have to be the way the speak and their personality/mannerisms. On television, the actor can drastically change their appearance as well as the setting as many times as they want and the audience know its a different character before the character even speaks. The type of play was meant for television so it can be as swift as it is reading it.
The way the play or the plot is structured is that it works its way through the characters trying to find the truth of what happened on that fateful day and why. The characters start with the truth about themselves and their identities. The play goes on to focus on characters and their view of the opposing racial community. A small amount of truth is pulled from each interview until the final act where the father reveals his truth of the events. On television, you can fragment the scenes and the actor can switch from one character to the next swiftly with a new set a clothes and look. On stage, the actors cannot pause the play to stop and change their entire look to fit a certain character, and because they are so many different characters in this play, it makes the transitions even harder. The actor is limited on the amount of change and variety they can put in to each character. The main difference between the characters would have to be the way the speak and their personality/mannerisms. On television, the actor can drastically change their appearance as well as the setting as many times as they want and the audience know its a different character before the character even speaks. The type of play was meant for television so it can be as swift as it is reading it.